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I read about the play here before seeing it on Baseball Tonight. After seeing it, I'm in the camp that would not call interference. The touch of the hands was so brief and incidental that I'd be hard-pressed to call that "an assist". It looked to me like the touch had absolutely no bearing on the runner's momentum, path, effort to stop or return to the base.
But I'll also say that the "degree" of any "assist" is at the discretion of the umpire observing it and I know that seeing things like this out on the field in "real time" can give an entirely different impression than what you get from multiple replays from the comfort of your couch.
Earlier this season, I did have the opportunity to end a game on this exact same call. Bottom of seventh (last inning), runner on first base representing the tieing run. Batter base hits to outfield, R1 goes to third.
R1's momentum carried him past third. On this one, the runner and the base coach made full-on body contact. The coach then grabbed the runner by the waist, spun him around and pushed him back toward the base.
Now that's an assist!
I banged the out- game over. This one was so obvious that the base coach didn't do anything other than hang his head and walk off the field.
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